The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.